The New Petro-Villain

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is 100 days old, and now another company is competing for the spotlight as a major petro-villain.

The upstart is Enbridge Energy Partners L.P. — a U.S.-based subsidiary of the Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. — which is responsible for the recent accident in Michigan that has filled the Kalamazoo River with some 800,000 gallons of oil and shown that crude does not need to be offshore to cause serious environmental damage. The incident occurred only months after the company was warned that it was not properly monitoring corrosion.

Enbridge is no stranger to controversy, both because of its own performance problems, including a series of earlier spills, and its role in facilitating the distribution of oil produced in environmentally destructive situations such as the Alberta tar sands. This dubious track record is worth a closer look.

  • In January 2001 a seam failure on a pipeline near Enbridge’s Hardisty Terminal in Alberta spilled more than 1 million gallons of oil.
  • In July 2002 a 34-inch-diameter pipeline owned by Enbridge Energy Partners ruptured in northern Minnesota, contaminating five acres of wetland with about 250,000 gallons of crude oil.
  • In January 2003 about 189,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Nemadji River from the Enbridge Energy Terminal in Superior, Wisconsin. Fortunately, the river was frozen at the time, so damage was limited.
  • In 2004 the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) proposed a fine of $11,500 against Enbridge Energy for safety violations found during inspections of pipelines in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. The penalty was later reduced to $5,000. In a parallel case involving Enbridge Pipelines operations in Minnesota, an initial penalty of $30,000 was revised to $25,000.
  • In January 2007 an Enbridge pipeline in Wisconsin spilled more than 50,000 gallons of crude oil onto a farmer’s field in Clark County. The following month another Enbridge spill in Wisconsin released 176,000 gallons of crude in Rusk County.
  • In November 2007 two workers were killed in an explosion that occurred at an Enbridge pipeline in Clearbrook, Minnesota. The PHMSA proposed a fine of $2.4 million for safety violations connected to the incident, but the case has not been resolved.
  • In 2008 the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources charged Enbridge Energy with more than 100 environmental violations relating to the construction of a 320-mile pipeline across much of the state. The agency said that Enbridge workers illegally cleared and disrupted wooded wetlands and were responsible for other actions that resulted in discharging sediment into waterways. In January 2009 the company settled the charges by agreeing to pay $1.1 million in penalties.
  • In 2009 the PHMSA fined Enbridge Pipelines LLC-North Dakota $105,000 for a 2007 accident that released more than 9,000 gallons of crude oil.
  • In March 2010 the PHMSA proposed a fine of $28,800 against Enbridge Pipelines LLC for safety violations in Oklahoma; the case is not yet resolved.

Apart from its safety record, Enbridge is targeted by environmentalists for its role in transporting crude oil from the controversial tar sand operations of northeastern Alberta, which are regarded as one of the largest contributors to global warming as well as a major source of air and water pollution and forest destruction. Enbridge’s predecessor companies had some involvement in the tar sands as early as the 1970s. That role expanded greatly in the late 1990s, when Enbridge completed construction of an $800 million expansion of its pipeline system to bring tar sands oil to Eastern Canada and the U.S. Midwest. The pipeline initially served Suncor Energy, a spinoff of U.S.-based Sunoco that is now Canada’s largest petroleum company.

In recent years Enbridge has spent billions of dollars to expand its oil pipeline capacity, much of it dedicated to the tar sands industry. Enbridge is set to provide another boon to the tar sands producers with the opening later this year of its Alberta Clipper pipeline, which will carry more of the dirty crude to Superior, Wisconsin. It is also proceeding with its Northern Gateway Project, which involves the construction of parallel pipelines from the tar sands region to the western shore of British Columbia. Enbridge is partnering with PetroChina on that project.

Enbridge is also headed for more controversy in light of its announcement in March 2010 that it would develop a natural gas pipeline serving areas of Pennsylvania and nearby states where Marcellus Shale drilling is taking place. Those drilling activities have been the subject of numerous reports of drinking water contamination.

Like BP, Enbridge depicts itself as a strong proponent of corporate social responsibility. Also like BP, Enbridge illustrates how those noble sentiments are meaningless in the face of repeated acts of negligence and recklessness.

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